


Meddling Meddlesome Meddler

by sinistralScribe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demonstuck, Reverse Demonstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 10:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3287588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinistralScribe/pseuds/sinistralScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are going to restore your brother’s free will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meddling Meddlesome Meddler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snowsheba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/gifts).
  * Inspired by [and let these demons find their way back home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2502554) by [Snowsheba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowsheba/pseuds/Snowsheba). 



> I highly recommend reading Snowsheba's Demonstuck fic before reading this. It was my inspiration, after all.

Your name is Rose Lalonde, and you are going to restore your brother’s free will.

You are speaking of course, of your younger brother, Dave. In the not so distant past, though it feels as such, a demon named John Turned him into one of them and destroyed your family. On John’s orders, which you brother was and is unable to disobey, Dave committed murder after murder of your friends, all fellow demon hunters. At one point, Dave was under orders to kill his own siblings on sight, an order which John had redacted _after_ it had resulted in Dave killing your older sister, Roxy. This had led to the steady mental decline of your older brother, Dirk, who in his madness had put your very life in the balance in the never-ending battle between the demons and the hunters. Ultimately, you sided with Dave against him. You had killed Dirk with your own two hands. Dave may be a demon, but he was your brother. Dirk may have been your brother, but he had clearly lost his mind long before the day you ended his life. You had been backed into a corner from which only one of them could be saved, and you chose Dave.

You are alone with John in his room, and you will not be wasting your rare opportunity to interact with him sans Dave’s devoted interference. Your stomach curdles every time your gaze falls on John. Your mask of cool composure can barely contain your hatred of him in mixed company. Today, you wear no such mask. You want him to see, to _know_ you utterly, because you hate him utterly for what he has done to your brother. Your needles are in your hands, one pressed against his jugular, the other hovering directly over his eye. You have him backed against the wall. You know the ice in your gaze is plain, because the demon is shaking from head to toe with fear.

“I’d like to ask you a question or two,” you say, and your voice could have wilted a field of flowers in full bloom.

John flinches and eyes the needle pointing at his eye, then looks back at you. “W-what about?” He tries for a light tone and fails miserably.

You stare into his disturbing bright blue eyes in silence. Finally, you ask, “Do you love my brother?”

“Yes,” he answers immediately, then shrinks back from your grimace. “We’re moir—”

“Kanaya has explained the concept,” you clip aggressively, and his mouth snaps shut. “Your relationship with him is quite literally the only thing keeping you alive at this moment, and I would call my dedication to your continued existence tenuous at best.” You wait a few moments for your statement to sink in. “Second question. Do you trust my brother?”

“With my life!” John assures you. His gaze still flicks between you and your left needle. Each time he tries to pull away from the right one on his neck, you follow the motion, never losing contact with his skin.

You narrow your eyes at his near-automatic response. “Do you really?” You taunt. “Then would you care to explain why you have not restored his free will?”

John stares at you like you’d just slapped him. “I would never hurt him.”

You hiss and press in close to him, because otherwise your needles would be shooting forward. “You did not answer my question,” you say in a dangerously low voice.

John seems to choose his next words carefully, or perhaps not, because his answer is, “…I can’t do that.”

“Let me make something abundantly clear to you, you vile, loathsome, revolting waste of space,” you breathe. Your mouth is damn near dripping venom. “As far as I am concerned, you _have_ hurt my brother. You have violated him in the worst of ways, stolen his free will, forced him to murder his own sister, and driven him to suicidal requests. When you say you would never hurt him, do you conveniently forget all the pain and horror you have already poured into his life? _Do you?”_

John’s eyes are filled with tears, and you don’t give a damn. He looks at you with a tortured expression. “No, I don’t forget,” he admits in a whisper. You feel no pity at the crack in his voice.

“Then you understand if I don’t believe you when you tell me you cannot free him. We both know that is a lie.” You lean in so your breath washes over his skin. With his back to the wall, he has no more room to retreat away from your face. You speak slowly, deliberately, so that each syllable has time to wash over him. “We both know you refuse to set my brother free because you are terrified of what he would do. And don’t you _dare_ act like loving him is good enough. Or that promising never to hurt him is good enough. From where I stand, you have done worse than murdering, raping, or torturing my brother. You have done worse than all of these combined, and if it would not destroy him for you to die—” You press the needle on John’s neck just deep enough to hurt. “You would already be dead.”

You exit the room and place your needles away in your sylladex. Kanaya and Karkat are waiting for you in your room. You close the door with a convincing slam to deter the other people in the house from dropping by for a friendly chat.

“How did it go?” Kanaya asks you hopefully.

“Not well,” you say. A dark part of you recalls John’s horror-struck face and amends, _Perhaps well enough._

“Then it’s time for Plan B,” Karkat says gruffly. “Let’s get this shit show started. I’ll go find Dave. Kanaya?”

“I will persuade John to follow me to the specified location,” Kanaya promises confidently.

“Thank you both,” you say as they exit. Kanaya gives you a supportive smile, and Karkat nods with respect. You had been wary of including him in the plan at first, but John’s dominion over Dave did not sit well with him. Kanaya had reassured you that Karkat would be willing to help, and she was right. The demon was clearly in love with your brother, and while you would normally be defensive about it, today it was one of your assets. You would be using every asset at your disposal to pull this off.

Ten minutes later, you stand in the entrance hall under the giant wizard statue. A clear wine glass is resting before you on an end table you had borrowed from an unused room. You hold a heavy, dusty tome in your hands. As you pour over the prose, you hear footsteps on either side of you. Karkat and Kanaya were operating in perfect synchronization, likely due to their respective abilities.

Dave immediately tenses, sensing the lack of coincidence and becoming suspicious. “What’s going on here, Rose?”

Without pause or reservation, you tell him the truth. “I am restoring your free will, Dave.”

His face is a practiced blank, but you see his emotions changing the set in his shoulders. His features tighten the slightest bit. You know only you can see it. “You can’t cure me, Rose,” he says in a level voice.

“That pipe dream is no longer my goal, Dave,” you say truthfully. “I am merely doing exactly what I said before. Nothing more.” You cast a venomous look in John’s direction. “Nothing less.”

John’s face is an unfiltered image of fear. “How can you even do that?” His voice trembles, and he tries not to look at Dave.

You smile, your mask unblemished by your distaste for John’s existence. “It’s a simple blood ritual I came across while perusing some of Calliope’s old texts,” you say smoothly. Karkat and Kanaya drag Dave and John forward to stand on either side of the small table. You access your sylladex and draw out one of your needles. Kanaya mumbles an apology and yanks John’s hand out to face you, palm up. You make a clean incision—perhaps deeper than necessary—and drip some of John’s blood into the glass. You can hear Dave grunt as he is held in place by Karkat’s Blood powers, unable to defend John.

“Relax, Dave. I’m not going to kill him,” you promise. Your tone, however, makes it clear you would like nothing more than just that.

You repeat the process with Dave’s hand, mixing it with John’s in the glass. You would make eye contact with him if he weren’t busy staring at John, who seemed to have been struck into silence by his own terror.

“It’s a good old fashioned spell,” you say. While you are reluctant to ease the tension between them, you do have a role to play. You swiftly cut your own palm and let your blood add to the mixture. “One part from the creator, one part from the Turned demon, and one part from a human blood relative. Then some cryptic ancient chanting. This shouldn’t take long.” You heft the large book in your hands and open your mouth to begin your lines.

“Wait, please?” John begs.

You turn instead to Dave. The glare he gives John is hard and cold. He rips his gaze from John and looks back at you. “Do it,” he says grimly.

You begin reading your best approximation of ancient Sumerian, hoping everything sounds passable for your purpose. You were not a linguist, and Sumerian was a rather niche language of study outside of South America. You hope you did it some justice though.

“Rose, please, wait!” You ignore John’s protests. The blood in the wine glass begins to roil and bubble violently. John clutches at his chest like he’s having a heart attack, and you see Dave do the same. “Please! Please, let me do this!” John wails. You abruptly stop your chanting and gaze at him. The blood in the glass grows calm again.

For a long minute, John leans on the table and stares at the floor. You heft the book suggestively, and his head snaps up. The look in his eyes is nothing but pain, as it should be. He draws in a deep breath and looks into Dave’s eyes. “Dave, you’re free. You can make your own choices, about everything, from now on, forever. You don’t have to do what I say ever again.”

You watch as Dave takes in a gasp of air as though he’d been suffocating. His eyes grow wide, and he collapses to the floor, but you and Karkat are on either side of him to gently lay him down. You sense that John wanted to jump forward to support him, but held himself back. For several heartbeats, Dave stares blankly into space, then his eyes dart to you.

“Rose,” he chokes out. You can see blood red tears welling in his eyes. You reach out to him, and he clings to you. “Rose.” His entire body is quivering as he cries on your shoulder, and you realize that you are crying too. Both your masks are forgotten as you embrace each other. He murmurs your name a few more times, mixed among apologies he has no need to speak, and all you can do is hold onto him. You don’t care that his ears are pointed, that he has fangs, or that the whites of his crimson eyes are black. He is your brother, you would dismantle Hell itself for him, and he knows it. He would do the same for you.

You are unaware how long you’ve been holding each other, but when you blink away your tears and look around, the other demons in the room look frozen. Dave had stopped time around you to have an undisturbed moment. He takes your hand. “I want to show you something,” he says, and you feel an odd shifting sensation as the world warps around you. He was transporting the both of you through time, you realize.

When the world solidifies again, you are both standing on a hilltop, overlooking your old hometown. You can pick out your old apartment building from the cluster of structures on this side of the city. Dave is staring right at it as well.

“This was the day I picked,” he says.

“The last day you were human.”

He nods, unsurprised at your astuteness. It was the same day you would have chosen, were you in his place.

“Are you still going through with it?” You don’t want him to, but it’s his choice. That was the point. You’re certain he had been forbidden from time traveling to prevent this very scenario, wherein he killed himself before ever being Turned.

He squeezes your hand tightly. “No,” he answers. “As fucked up as my life is, I don’t want to destroy it. Not after you went to so much trouble to get my free will back.” He gives you a smile you haven’t seen since you were children, and you feel more tears pricking your eyes as you return it.

“I had some help from Kanaya and Karkat,” you say humbly. “And as always, some psychology.”

He stares at you, processing your words. “There was no ritual, was there?”

You shake your head. “No. I searched through every book in that building. There was nothing.” Karkat had supplied the parlor trick of boiling blood and induced the pain in their chests. The book you had been holding was just a collection of Calliope’s short stories. The ‘Sumerian incantation’ was just some gibberish you had made up. “Only John was ever able to free you.”

“So you played him like your violin,” he says with complete admiration. He snorted. “That’s some real Devil Went Down to Georgia shit, sis.”

You allow yourself a smug look. “I think you’ll find when it comes to mind games, I am simply the best there is.”

“You’re more than that,” Dave insists. “Did I ever tell you that you’re the best sister ever?”

You nod. “Yes, I believe we were five or six years old. I let you drink the last box of apple juice.” He pulls you into a hug, and you let a few tears sink into the fabric of his shirt. “You are going back to him.” You know that the restoration of Dave’s free will would not erase how he felt about John.

You feel his head moving as he nods into your hair. “I can’t hate him, Rose. I just…can’t.” The guilt in his voice makes you grip him tighter.

You pull your head back so you can look him in the eyes. “Then, I will take it upon myself to hate him enough for the both of us.”

“You already do,” Dave pointed out.

“Just promise me one thing.” You reach up to touch his cheek as tears keep streaming down your own. “Promise me you won’t ever, _ever_ forgive him.”

He meets your gaze, and the pain he would hide from anyone else bored into your soul through his eyes. “I promise.”

The two of you approach the mansion, still holding hands as you trod through the snow. Your faces are once again under control, the picture of serenity as you pull open the doors. The others are still roughly in the positions you’d left them. It seemed you had only been gone a few minutes.

John’s head shoots up at the sound of the door opening. His face is glistening with tears. Relief and apprehension battle for control of his face, and he takes a hesitant step forward. You and Dave exchange one of your looks that speak volumes, and you ever so slowly let your hand release his. Your heart aches as he walks over to John and wraps him in a comforting hug. You ignore the churning in the pit of your stomach for once, as John blubbers and tries to articulate his endless regret.

You had succeeded. Your brother was free.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional props to Snowsheba for inspiring this work! Also, she has apparently declared this canon--!?--for which I am endlessly grateful and flattered!
> 
> [Snowsheba's tumblr](http://snowsheba.tumblr.com/)


End file.
